"'I wont,' says Noah.
"'Well, ye can go to Blazes—It's only a shower, anyway.'"
Augusta, hysterically stuffing the bed clothes against her mouth, heard her mother's hearty, pleasant laugh ring out. And for an instant she thought that her own little play was real; that she was, indeed, the little girl of other years lying in her cot and listening to the grown folks in the other room.
Then her own laughter turned, as laughter will, to hot, choking tears of fear and trepidation that burned her throat.
The talk outside ran on pleasantly, naturally; just such an hour as Wardwell and one or two others of the boarders had often spent with her mother. Wardwell loved to tell stories, to run on about himself, about his lack of money—it was a tradition of the house, founded probably on his own authority, that he had but three socks, one of which he washed every night—about the scrapes which he was constantly getting into and getting out of. He never laughed at the end of one of his own tales, but always before beginning one he would break out with a short, provoking laugh to himself, as though he had just heard a good thing.
It was all so natural, so real, that Augusta, her mind unconsciously relaxing from the strains of the day, caught herself almost falling asleep. She heard one after another of the boarders come up the stairs and stop for a moment, at the door of the room where the two chatted, for a rather timid and curious word or two with the mistress of the house. But with Rose Wilding there was nothing except the usual and the ordinary. She was in her own house, her own room, doing as she had done on any other evening. Her house was making its orderly, routine way to bed.
Finally Wardwell rose, saying:
"Well, Mrs. Wilding, it's time honest folk were in bed, and all rogues were turned out. I'm going before I'm turned out."
"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, there's worse than you in the world. But I suppose it's late. I am tired."
Augusta heard the door close behind Wardwell, and her mother came straight to the bedroom door and pushed it wide open. The full light from the door fell straight across the cot where Augusta lay.